Father removes 9 yr old daughter from school over sex ed lessons

Teachers can't possibly know the children they teach as well the children's parents Caleo and there's nothing wrong with wanting children to be children or any prudishness in the concerns that have been voiced here.

You would be surprised how well teachers know children....

They are measuring their social and emotional development as well as their education

Teachers know children very well in the envyin which they encounter them. But they have no knowledge of how a child behaves in the other environments that make up a greater part of their life or how they interact with other adults and children outside the school environment.

I have been surprised over and over again to encounter a completely different person outside the school environment to the one that I know so well within it -for just a few hours a week. Almost as surprised as they have been to encounter me as a shopper or a mummy or a person doing a silly dance!

We all, parents, teachers, friends, whatever, only know one aspect of a personality, the one that we experience. I’m not sure anyone can claim to have superior knowledge of any child - or adult come to that.

No one said "superior"

I said "you would be surprised how well teachers know children"

It's certainly enough to gage where they are on understanding of social and emotional education

Lathyrus, of course I do agree with you. What I mean is that teachers know how to let a child express what he knows and what he wants to know. Teachers know what stories to tell a child so he understands sexual and other relationships.

Anatomy, physiology, and psychology of sex may expressed in age- appropriate language. 'Age-appropriate language' is largely child led, and the teacher is skilled in letting the child lead the teacher to understand what understanding he or she already has. Let's not forget too that sex education includes human relationships a field of exploration that can be best understood by way of story. E.g. Jesus taught in parables.

I was responding to Caleos post and agree with what she has explained more fully about an educators understanding of children and how expertise in children’s thinking and learning is important.

But I would reiterate that we only know them in one context, for instance where there are responsible, sympathetic adults that order their environment. Out of school, where they may be the only responsible person in the home, their level of emotional and social understanding may be quite different.

We see and know just part of the pattern that makes the whole.

Lathyrus of course teachers only know how children are in school, though we often make deductions of about how they are out of school from how they behave and the things they say.

How they are at home is often totally different, and we are sometimes told that by parents.
In school, unlike at home there is a curriculum which schools are obliged to follow, regardless of whether or not a teacher personally feels it is suitable. Parents have more right than teachers to question what is taught in RSE.

Definitely Caleo

When it comes to behaviour, if children generally behaved at school like they do at home we would have a nervous breakdown the first day back

Do the parents at you school know you have such a negative view of their parenting?

Does your management team know of your views on parents? Or do they agree with you?

Should parents be expected to entrust their children to a school that expresses such negative views, perhaps subliminally, if not directly, to the children themselves.

We believed that parents and teachers were partners and should treat each other with mutual respect.

It was a joke Lathyrus

One that parents generally find funny

Lighten up a bit

VioletSky

When it comes to behaviour, if children generally behaved at school like they do at home we would have a nervous breakdown the first day back

I can only but surmise that you are talking about your own children here, as, obviously, you can’t know what others’ children are like all the time at home. My AC, when young, and my GC now, do not reflect the comment you made.

VioletSky

It was a joke Lathyrus

One that parents generally find funny

Lighten up a bit

Ah, it’s a joke. Oh. I thought we were discussing quite serious issues with regard to the next generation…..

Yes, I work in a village school where I also live, I literally know everyone and if I was a horrible TA I wouldn't get invited to so many parties

Yes my post was a joke too.

Lighten up a bit😬

Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t really find “jokes” that are nasty about people very funny.

I laughed at your reply so all good Lathyrus

Lathyrus

Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t really find “jokes” that are nasty about people very funny.

No, but evidently some do.

Some people eh

Miserable sods

Primrose53

When did they stop allowing parents to remove kids from lessons on religious grounds?

I was excused from RE lessons at grammar school as we were RC and myself and a few others were allowed to catch up on homework etc.

They still let you, a friend’s granddaughter was just removed (dp s are atheists)

I think what parents and teachers often don't realise is how much talk there is in the playground or with their friends that shows the children aren't as innocent as a lot of people on here think they are. Along with that lack of innocence though there's a lack of real understanding which needs to be put right.

Are a lot of posts suggesting that people think children are innocent? I really don't think there are.

Not wanting them to know about anal sex is not assuming an unreasonable level of 'innocence' (although I wouldn't use the word in that way in this case, really.

As I said upthread, when I was 12 or so I knew about sex and had seen my mum go through pregnancy and the birth of my brother, but I didn't really know that people did it on purpose. Did I need to at 12? I think most people don't have sex so young (although of course I know that some do), so finding out gradually was probably age-appropriate. I knew what sex was, and that it was how women got pregnant, but I found out the mechanics of it as I started experimenting.

Children now grow up faster, but really - are 9 year olds having anal sex? If so, that should be the issue - not whether they are learning about it at school, whether that is on one school or all of them. Why do they need to know about it?

I wish I could have the actual leaflet, I can't say with certainty no schools are doing this but I haven't been able to find one that is

I have found one that mentions masturbation but only as something not to be ashamed of and natural and it didn't say it was aimed at Y4 so none the wiser

The internet has failed me

Children now grow up faster, but really - are 9 year olds having anal sex?

No but they often know about these things. Children having anal sex would be illegal!

Children having sex at all is illegal, so legality isn’t the issue

They might ‘know about’ all manner of sexual practices, but do they really need to discuss them at 9? I suppose it comes down to the purpose of the classes. Is it to prepare them for when their bodies change and they start having sexual feelings, or to teach them how to engage in sexual acts? Personally I think that the former approach is healthier, and that encouraging exploration within consensual boundaries will allow them to find out for themselves what they find enjoyable.

I agree that if some children have been exposed to or traumatised by pornography they may want and need to be reassured about how far they will be expected to do the things they have seen - what a world. Is that a job for teachers though? That brings us back to tails wagging dogs, I think.

We, as a society, need to think about how we can allow freedom of choice for adults whilst protecting children from the effects of that. I don’t think that a child can give informed consent to viewing porn (morally as well as legally). When things are seen they can’t be unseen, and shrugging our collective shoulders and saying ‘oh well, they know about these things from the Internet, so we’d better expand sex ed to include them’ doesn’t feel to me to be the best way of dealing with the problem.